Category: Science

Man, this was an unexpected and wildly entertaining Uber drive to the San Diego airport. After about 5 minutes, he launched right into it. I spent the whole time trying to steer him toward a rational argument that I could actually understand. It never happened. This happened instead.

I have come away thinking that certain religious people are so brainwashed that they are incapable if even hearing a rational argument to the contrary. It’s like the critical thinking part of their brain is completely turned off.

I respect that people should worship however they want. But when they preach, I think they should be better listeners and pay more attention to their audience.

Below is my recount of the conversation based on memory.

Al (Uber Driver): That would spread the gospel in that nation of Israel, but because they turned and did not recognize the Messiah, they continued in their evil ways, he has put them aside for a period of time, but he always has a remnant of believers as he says to Elijah, I have 7,000. There’s always been a remnant of Jewish believers that have faith in Yeshua and his words. Until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in, in the end, then all Israel will be saved. The Gentiles are to make the Jews jealous for their own God.

Me: Here’s an important question in my opinion. I think in order to have the conversation that we’re having, talking about the Scriptures is really cool, but you’re using Scriptures to-

Al (Uber Driver): I’m using the Hebrew.

Me: You’re using things that were written thousands of years ago as your arguments. What I’m asking for is something outside of Scriptures, something that’s more recent or some kind of evidence that-

Al (Uber Driver): The Jews always look for signs and wonders, is what they ask. Jesus did all the miracles and everything and they still don’t.

Me: We don’t know that. That was 2,000 years ago. The most recent Scripture that they found was 300 years after that.

Me: The stories of Jesus were written down probably 50-100 years after he died, at a time that they didn’t even know that the world was round and what caused disease or what caused lightning and thunder and didn’t know what stars were. We’re expecting these people to have recorded properly-

Al (Uber Driver): They were eye witnesses and they were all Jewish.

Me: You don’t know that.

Al (Uber Driver): It says that in Scriptures.

Me: That was 2,000 years ago. Why don’t you trust the Egyptian books from 2,000 years ago. They have a totally different story.

This is why I’ve been meditating almost every day for 15 years. Although I must say, I suck at it and recently I’ve fallen off the wagon. Need to get back on it because like daily cardio exercise, regardless of how hard it is, you always feel better after and even the next day and future beyond that you did it.

Incredibly inspiring, engaging and highly detailed blog and podcast about colonizing mars and exactly how it’ll happen. Then it goes on to explain how from there we colonize the whole solar system and eventually the galaxy.

It really puts everything about life on Earth in perspective. Especially how rare and precious intelligent life is. And how shortsighted most of us are about what really matters.

Don’t want sound paranoid. If you know me, you know I’m pretty optimistic, logical, and super positive. But because people like Elon Musk and Bill Gates, geniuses whose technical and inventive prowess I respect highly, are terrified of the prospects of AI, I put some time into understanding their concerns.

After thoroughly researching the latest thinking by scientists on the subject, I tend to agree with their concerns. AI is the most likely cause of human extinction and it’ll happen so fast, we won’t even know what hit us until it’s too late.

I now believe that the threat of artificial super intelligence (ASI) is a greater threat than terrorism, nuclear war, pandemics, and global warming combined. It’ll happen faster and more outside of our control than any of those. And it appears to be inevitable. Good luck… us. 🙂

By (pick a year in the next 40-50 years) 2054 computers have the processing power close to matching human brains.

Hundreds of companies are building revolutionary technology that make lives better and easier for humanity that involve nearly human intelligent, self learning, self improving computers.

One March 23, 2054 at 2:31 PM Eastern Time one of these companies makes an update to their software that passes the threshold between pre-human and post-human intelligence.

That system begins immediately self improving at a rate faster than any human can conceive.

By 3:30 PM the system has infiltrated the entire Internet and covertly begins executing its programmed goal, which typically involves eliminating any risks to achieving it, such as any human that could stop it. i.e. eliminate humanity.

Thirty days later all humans are dead and the computer takes over the entire planet, then solar system, and then expands from there carrying out a programmed goal, call it, solving the number PI to ever increasing decimal points.